


flickers

by fwooshy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble Collection, Drarry Discord Writers Corner Drabble Challenge, M/M, Microfic, Tumblr: drarrymicrofic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 54
Words: 9,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29968248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fwooshy/pseuds/fwooshy
Summary: A collection of drarry drabbles ranging between fifty and one-thousand words.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. Begin

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of drabbles that are also posted on [tumblr](https://fw00shy.tumblr.com/tagged/fwoosh-writes).
> 
> I list all warnings per drabble in the chapter notes. Since most chapters are short, you may want to click the "Entire Work" button for easier reading!

The summer after brings a lightness that carries Draco all through his trials and into the next year. The others hiss and spit but they don’t see how he’s free now, how it can only get better for him from here.

When Harry confronts him about it with his fists clenched and his face blotchy and red, Draco says, “Can’t you see, my life’s finally begun,” and wishes Harry believed it too.


	2. Carefree

After the war Harry is clumsy in a way that seems light and easy and not at all embarrassing or irritating. He bumps shoulders and knocks wrists and trips ankles and then he picks himself up and says sorry, but then he smiles so soft and loose that Draco can tell that he’s not sorry at all. So when Harry stumbles and lands a kiss straight on Draco’s mouth and apologizes, Draco says, “No, you’re not”, and then kisses him back, thinking how nice it is to not have to think so hard before making decisions anymore.


	3. Spark

Too hot, too damp, too cold, too dry — Harry can’t ever seem to get comfortable at Hogwarts anymore. It becomes especially bad in winter when the air dries out so severely that any time Harry pulls on a jumper, he pops out looking like Bellatrix’s nerdy younger brother. Hermione says it’s because one of the Death Eaters messed up the HVAC when coming through the Vanishing Cabinet the year before, so Harry takes that to mean that it’s Draco Malfoy’s fault, again. He stops Draco in the halls and shoves him up against the wall by the robes, his skin prickling, Draco’s hair standing up like a dandelion poof. “You feel that, Potter?” Draco asks, and Harry shivers. There’s always electricity between them, he doesn’t need static to remind him of that.


	4. Denial

No, you can’t. No, you must. No, that’s wrong. No, that’s right. Draco’s favourite word is No, and Harry knows this because they’re Auror partners so they share the same office and the same suspects and sometimes even the same plate of chips, or the same bed. In bed, Draco is even worse, a near litany of Nos. No, we can’t. No, we shouldn’t. No, not like that. No, I’m ready. No, go slower. No, faster. No, don’t leave, please don’t leave.

If Draco’s favourite word is No, then Harry’s favourite word is maybe something like Alright, okay, okay, I’ve got you, I’ll stay.


	5. Light

The windows in Harry’s bedroom start from Draco’s knees and sweep up to the curtain rods, hitting just below the ceiling. They’re curtained now, but haphazardly so, with lazy strips of light falling over the bed, the blades of Harry’s shoulders. Draco squints at the light, trying to guess at the time. Just past ten, probably. Harry likes to sleep a lot, maybe ten or eleven hours most days, sometimes straight through on the weekends. Draco doesn’t sleep as much, maybe seven at most, but he always pretends that he does. “Can’t make it, don’t know how long I’ll lay in til,” he’ll tell Pansy when all he’s planning on doing is pushing himself up against Harry’s chest and wrapping Harry’s drowsy arms around himself until he feels warm again. It never takes long.


	6. Mirror

Harry’s shift starts early so he leaves his good mornings on the mirror in pink lippy. The lippy is one that Ginny left behind; the messages are for Draco. 

The bathroom they share in Grimmauld Place is lined up to Draco’s chest in pale yellow subway tile. The rest is wallpapered in white narcissuses that remind Draco of his mother. The wallpaper looks fresh even though Draco knows Harry didn’t put it up himself. It’s obvious which rooms Harry redid and which ones he hasn’t. When Draco walks between them he feels as though he’s being ricocheted between his past and his future.

Draco doesn’t like mirrors so it’s not until Harry comes home late one night asking if Draco saw the message he left that Draco realizes what he’s been missing. Draco is already in near tears with worry. He thought Harry was dead. But when he tries to explain that he doesn’t look into mirrors, that he hasn’t since sixth-year, what comes out is a sort-of lie about how he must’ve missed it, and how it won’t happen again.

That night Draco stands in front of the mirror. The man who stares back is pale but warmed by candlelight. He finds that he doesn’t mind the way he looks. But he knows that what he sees before him is a pale reflection of reality. Mirrors only show you what you want to see, and Draco sees a man in another universe where Harry Potter forgives him because he’s done something good with his life. Draco knows the dangers of delusions, so he wills for his face to grow gaunt and sallow, the way it had looked in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, or the way his father’s had looked in Azkaban.

Harry’s shuffling in the adjoining bedroom and it startles Draco so that he catches the pink lippy in the upper right corner. It says, “Have a wonderful day! I love you!”. The word love is underlined twice. Draco feels himself growing pink. He wants to rub the words off, to hide from them. He’s afraid they’re true. He’s afraid that he feels the same.


	7. Luminous

Draco’s side is cold when Harry wakes in the dark. The moon spills in between the blinds, hard shadows playing with shifts in the sheets the shape of Draco’s body. Harry imagines Draco outside on the deck, pale and luminary, still as the stars he sees, and turns to sleep.


	8. Shadow

Draco’s shadow has always crept close to his steps. Some days he thinks it has a face with the jagged cliff of his father’s nose; or Fenrir’s greedy maw. A muffled clang turns his attention toward his darkness, stretching long down the empty seventh-floor corridor. Today it wears Potter’s eyes.


	9. Camera Obscura

Harry traces the blurred borders of Draco’s body from his feet down past his mouth, his eyes. He looks back at the pinhole and imagines Draco on the other side, straight-backed and serious and solid all the way through. Here, he’s a smudge of a soul, curling in Harry’s heart.


	10. Delicate

Delicate like the gossamer close of lids, the pale flutter of lashes; delicate like the gauzy cling of lace up the neck. Delicate fingers, slender and exacting, reaching through jagged ribs to the coarse muscle encaged, whispering Harry soft; fragile; vulnerable. He knows he can break them, but he doesn’t.


	11. Absent-Minded

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For drarry discord drabble corner challenge prompt "potion", wc 394
> 
> warnings: angst

The other day Harry mixes up the bottles at the apothecary and picks up a Forgetfulness Potion instead of his usual Sleeping Draught. The potioneer at the counter gives him an odd look when Harry takes out his coin purse to pay for it, but Harry disregards him because the potioneer is Draco Malfoy. That night, when Harry gets ready for bed he notices the tag on the potion, blue instead of the usual yellow, and realizes the mixup. But it’s already past midnight, and he’s had a long day, so he pretends he doesn’t see it and knocks the potion back in one gulp.

Within minutes Harry’s mind is cotton-soft and blissfully blank. It’s the best sleep he’s ever had. He buys two the next day, and swigs one down just outside the door, just before he remembers the smell of blood spilling out of Draco’s chest again.

Sure, he forgets things, but Harry’s figured out a system. The potion comes in waves, leaving troughs of lucidity in the morning for Harry to jot down agendas for himself. The rest of the day follows easily as 1-2-3. One, shower. Two, work. Three, the apothecary. Every day the potioneer’s brows raise higher and higher, but he never speaks, because they’re not friends, or so Harry thinks anyway, he can’t remember why. Maybe they dated before, and it didn’t work out. It’s a shame, because the potioneer is really devastatingly attractive, with his crisp angles and flinty grey eyes, exactly Harry’s type, and Harry is lonely enough to want even through the fog of forgetfulness.

One day the potioneer refuses to take his galleons. The potioneer says, “Potter, I won’t let you kill yourself this way,” in a plummy sort of a hiss, like a jewelled cobra, or maybe a dragon.

The potioneer’s words sound like a threat, and when Harry responds back he sounds dangerous too, or angry, at least. Harry says, “Piss off, Malfoy. I’m less dead than I was without it. It’s the only way I want to live.”

His words sound strange to him, dreadful in their heavy despair. He’s mortified by how hateful they are, and he wants to take them back.

It’s a hot day outside. Harry hears the potioneer calling his name, although he doesn’t know why. So he smiles and asks, “I’m sorry, do I know you?”


	12. Cloudy

It was one of those days when the sky hugged so low that I wanted to take a broom up through it and stir it up. “You could drown in a cloud like that,” Draco said, so I told him I’d be fine; I’d drowned in his eyes and lived.


	13. Percussion

The lake is an expanse of white and Draco a swirl of wind above. Harry leans out from a window in the owlery, his whole body strumming loud with every swell of Draco’s broom. He longs to be swept up; to take off. He wants to grow wings and fly.


	14. Mistletoe

It isn’t a big deal (a single sprig of mistletoe hung under the doorframe), but Draco avoids it year after year, edging around it like a taunt even as the faces change around him. This year he’s in the kitchen—flicking wary glances at it like he always does—when he catches on Harry through the other room. Their eyes meet; Harry’s mouth curling, warm as a promise.


	15. Cosy

Soft light. Light as the perfume on Mother’s cashmere scarf. Supple as the leather of an armchair before the fire. Bare feet peeking out from under heavy blankets, blanketed thick as the meadows coloured white as marshmallows squished over cocoa. Harry’s cocoa, a sweetness that Draco tastes with every kiss.


	16. Wallowing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: grief, hints of past major character death

I’m in a room and seeing another from when things were golden-hued and begonias bloomed where you walked and bells rang when you laughed and your eyes shimmered like the silver reflection of a lake in the distance. I want to go back to that time so badly that my whole chest sticks to itself like a wad of gum. Like I’m stuck in the past, skipping breaths until I can be with you again.


	17. Candle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: werewolves

“Have you ever considered the glow of a candle in a dark room,” Draco says in the still space between them, his eyes a shining yellow as unblinking as the moon.

The room has no windows, no furnishings. There is no light except the single candle that melts the minutes by in drips.

“The way it hides darkness in the depressions of your face,” Draco continues, jaw slack and nearly prophetic. “The way it projects your shadows up walls and looms them large, inescapable.”

Harry doesn’t say anything because he isn’t sure Draco is entirely himself. They’re testing a new formula of Wolfsbane. One painless night spent alone in a windowless room, and the rest of the month is yours to freely live. That is the hope the potion sells.

“The way it burns you when you get too close.”

Harry writes up the report in his mind. “Patient docile. Potion effective. Philosophical babble—side effect.” He wonders if it’s a minor enough side effect that they’ll write it off, ink it on the bottle in small print. It’s not Harry’s choice, and Draco’s not hurting anyone. But he is hurting; Harry can see that because he knows Draco these days. He knows how much it hurt when Draco woke from the war a werewolf. How the lines hardened on his face like he aged twenty years in one. How they soften under Harry’s touch, like wax. Softening, but never melting. Pliable, but never yielding enough to reveal the child that hides within.

Draco’s clawed hand hovers over the flame as it licks up toward him. Any closer and his palm will start to sweat as though he’s melting.

Harry considers the glow of a candle in a dark room. The way it burns, only to die. The way it eats the air thin as the breath before a kiss.


	18. Shopping List

For his mother: 6.53-carat tennis bracelet with dragon tail clasp, charmed with the usual perfumes & protections.  
For Father: box of chocolates bribed between the bars of Azkaban.  
For Scorpius: wizard chess set (charmed against breaks, for when Uncle Ron gets a wee too enthusiastic).  
For Harry: today, tomorrow, forever.


	19. Warmth

They want me to say things like, he’s grey eyes, a pointy nose; frost-blond hair and a smirk as cool as moonlight. I want to tell them instead of the naked affection he wears when he sees me stepping down from the train. The way his shoulders seem draped in devotion, his eyes tender and trusting. I love him so much, it’s like I see him inside-out.


	20. revisiting my ex, the one who died

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: grief, past major character death

I don’t bring you flowers anymore. But I did at first, with Granger of all people. We’d spread the stems over your grave before we drifted, lost in the isolation of our individual miseries. It was better this way, the quiet. I preferred her silence to the words spilt like spoiled honey from the lips of anyone who knew your name; words stuck into simpering sentences about the patience with which you taught, with which you led; about how that patience changed their lives.

They don’t know you like I do. They don’t know about the time you lost your temper when I failed yet again to conjure a Patronus. You said, “Fuck, Draco. We’ve been together five years, and you still can’t think of a single happy memory?”

I was happy. I was the happiest I’ve ever been. But I didn’t know how to explain that happiness wasn’t worth the pain of its end, because nothing good lasts forever. Every memory sours with time.

But I was wrong.

Funny how you’re dead now and my Patronus comes to me like water from a river, flowing effortlessly from my wand with every memory of you. I see you in treacle tart and bacon, in the glint of the sun. In the sudden gust of wind that rocks me on my broom. And in the dead of the night when I’m the most alone, I feel your strength lending me the courage to move on.

I don’t bring you flowers anymore. You’re all around me—like you never left.


	21. Together

In the morning is half-brushed teeth and jumpers pulled inside-out on the stumble to the Burrow. “The things I do for a Molly Weasley breakfast,” Draco pats his stomach lovingly an hour later. His words are drowned out by Rose’s wild squeal as Scorpius catapults a runny egg to her open book. Harry considers the ramifications of scolding his son over Christmas breakfast and instead smears a cinnamon roll over Draco’s face. Time blurs by then—one chest-aching guffaw after another—and not just because he breaks his specs on a whole quiche flung at his face (Ron’s fault). Molly only pretends to scowl, because messes don’t matter so much when everything can be put back together with a lazy swish of a wand.

Lunch is after a change of clothes and a rousing round of complaints (“A bow-tie? Really, Dad? Really?”). Narcissa outdoes herself with a summer banquet enjoyed in the greenhouse on picnic blankets over freshly grown grass. Harry takes a bite of biscuit and surveys the snowman on the other side of the glass, wondering if he’s watching them too, like looking into a snow globe made of summer. A sun globe? He ponders on this until Scorpius snugs up against his side, half-asleep, and they take it as their cue to head home.

Crackerjack purrs between their legs as they step back out of the Floo. “I’m going to put him to bed,” Harry says again about Scorpius in his arms after Draco yawns over him the first time. Draco blinks slowly, so sweet with his hair mussed that Harry can’t help but pull him in too, his whole family in his arms. “Thanks,” he murmurs against the shell of Draco’s ear, Scorpius’s lashes tickling his cheek. He doesn’t want to let go.


	22. She Was Like Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the December Drarry Discord Drabble Challenge prompt, tradition. [jocundasykes](https://jocundasykes.dreamwidth.org/profile) did an amazing reading of it too, which you can listen to on [dreamwidth](https://jocundasykes.dreamwidth.org/1064.html)

Mother’s Paris parlour was a riotous affair of colour. Verdant walls grew busy bouquets of chrysanthemum and baby’s-breath. Peacock feathers and peonies filled vases of jade and green glass. They crowded the fireplace mantle, jingling whenever the Floo flared to life—which wasn’t often—as I was the only one permitted in. Limiting visitors to family was the sort of psychological self-flagellation that tradition bequeathed a widow. But still—the decor was unexpectedly garish, especially after the greys of Malfoy Manor.

It was hard to see Mother’s face behind the shadow of her black veil. I squinted at it though I knew that behind the veil was another mask. Mother’s face was of granite and ice. It had lied to the Dark Lord. And I was just a boy who should have known better, so I never stood a chance.

Mother raised a heavy hand to her chin, my father’s ring flashing a warning. She said, “You should not have told me.”

I swallowed. “I wanted you to know.”

“You should have produced an heir by now.”

Should. Shouldn’t. Those two words passed judgment over every one of my choices. I should’ve befriended Harry. I shouldn’t have lost against him at Quidditch. I should’ve killed Dumbledore. I shouldn’t have led Vince into that room to die. I should’ve taken up my father’s seat at Wizengamot. I shouldn’t have joined the Aurors, and I absolutely shouldn’t have asked Harry to marry me.

Mother’s robes were a black that seemed to swallow up all life around her. In them, my vision narrowed.

“You’re my mother,” I said, because I had nothing else left to say. It came out like an accusation.

I couldn’t meet her eyes, so I looked at her hands, watching her fiddle the peridot on her pinky. I wasn’t sure if I should’ve gleaned its significance. Then she coughed, and I realized that her mask had slipped.

Mother said: “The wedding should be in spring.”

My heart hammered. “Are you sure—”

She nodded rigidly. And then I saw the room for what it was: rebellion, in the only way Mother knew how. She was like me: trapped. Except she was letting me escape.


	23. Joy

Joy is an ugly taloned beast breaking my mouth open in a grin that shows all my teeth. I’m a brute when Harry calls to me; grotesque every time he sighs my name in sleep. He beckons to the joy in me, and it possesses me, makes me a monster.


	24. Evergreen

Harry buys a cabin nestled deep in the woods, but the distance is of no consequence to him, because he is a wizard, and the Floo is a friend. The Floo soon becomes his best friend when he tumbles through it every few days to the Granger-Weasleys or the Burrow or Draco’s flat in London.

Stuff starts accumulating in the cabin; things like silver spoons, silk pants, photographs, a crystal peacock. It’s all stuff that he’s pretty sure isn’t his but still feels like his when he sees them. Like how someone seems like yours because you love them (when in reality, nothing owns anything (except maybe time)). 

Your friends. Your husband. Your son. 

Harry doesn’t know precisely when others start coming more than he goes, but if he had to guess it’d be around when Teddy brings home Victoire and their firstborn daughter. The babe bursts through the fireplace shrieking, alighting the whole cabin aflame with her wails. Harry takes her from her frazzled parents and rocks her in his arms. He thinks that maybe having the time and space to love and be loved is the best magic of all. 

Seasons change, edging him closer to the close with every passing snowfall. Yet when Draco leans on him in front of the fire, he feels sturdy as a tree, his roots reaching far beyond the Floo to evermore.


	25. Aftermath

Draco lives and breathes Arithmancy in the aftermath of the war. He studies it in lecture halls, in the university libraries. He practices it each day from the moment the morning rouses him awake. What is the probability that he will get out of bed today? What is the likelihood that he will have clean socks? He starts with simple questions—questions that don’t require the rigours of numerology—and finds solace in the certainty of their answers.

Day after day he asks increasingly complicated questions. Questions like: will he pass his classes? Will his mother be well when he calls on her? Will his father survive the winter in Azkaban? Uncertainty begins creeping into the answers: probably, likely, not likely.

He works on his father for all of spring and summer, asking questions like: Will his father survive if he bribes a ministry official? If he sends chocolates on Christmas? Or every Sunday?

He sleeps three hours a day. He drops out of his classes. He reads every book in the library and resents the wasted time when he finds nothing within their pages. And with every day, a nagging question grows within him.

Why had his father, who was well-practised in Arithmancy, failed to prognosticate Harry’s victory?

And yet, why had others, who had not the slightest inclination toward numbers, known with such certainty?

Draco asks this question on the first day of winter. The answer comes fluttering from his heart, like a tiny bird warm with hope.

He writes to Harry, and his father survives the winter.


	26. Reunion

It’s like nothing’s changed when they meet again. Harry’s wearing a Gryffindor-red headband with the Nike swoosh, gaze unblinking over Draco on the opposite side of the court. Draco grinds his white shoe into the clay and kisses the ball once before he serves. The crowd hushes; Harry lunges—chasing.


	27. Invitation

It’s the Year of Yes, and Yes starts with this Quidditch jersey, Yes, the one with your old number on the back. Yes, they’ve taken a photo, and Yes, the rumours are true, it’s been five years or forever. I’m warm in worn crimson & gold, and Yes, Harry, I’m saying Yes.


	28. Eltanin

It’s late enough when you find me that the night’s shattered into a million shards of mirrored glass. You’re a familiar reflection when you see me, at last—a fragmented brightness in the dark, whole though broken; warm when I expect the cold. Do you know, I look for you too?


	29. Surprise

“A lot about you surprised me,” Draco said. “It’s.” He laughed a little; two breezy puffs of it. “It’s embarrassing, honestly, how every petty assumption I made about you ended up being a throwaway in the grand epic of your life. Like the time that hippogriff bit me—”

Harry covered an eye with his palm. “Not this again.”

“Alright, I won’t,” Draco said, and let the words clog up thick in his chest. He looked at his hands. To them, he asked, “But, am I? Surprising? Do I surprise you?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I mean, this morning, when you added blueberries to the pancakes. I’ve never thought of doing that.”

Draco laughed again, light as a wind that rattled no leaves. “That’s nothing. Anyone could do that.”

“You’re not a throwaway, Draco.”

Draco looked down at his hands again. They were soft and pale and like new, like they’d never been used.

Draco thought about all the things that he’d almost done, but didn’t.

“Yeah,” he said. He tucked his hands away in his pockets, to hide them.


	30. Felony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: reckless driving

“Go faster,” Draco says.

“No.” Harry grits his teeth, narrows his eyes on the road marks blurring beneath them. The car strums wild under his palms, and he feels it straining to break free like a beast chained to his own chest.

“No. I can’t,” Harry says.

They’ve been pushing ninety-nine in a sixty-five. Harry can’t explain why he keeps wanting stupid things like this, like Draco. He should slow down or put his foot down or go and have his meltdown at home or something, but he’s too stupid on want to do anything except keep his hands on the wheel and his eyes straight ahead.

“Scared, Potter?”

Harry feels the smirk coming; can’t stop it from devouring his face. He stomps on the pedal.

“You wish.”


	31. Jubilee

Cherry lips stained dark & sugared against skin smooth as cream. Harry imagines them sticky against his mouth; each kiss sweet & slick on his tongue, cool until it flambés down his throat, where he’s choking with want. Touching Draco feels like drowning, like his every breath, burning.


	32. Birthdays

“I…” Harry blinked.

Malfoy nudged the drink between them. “It’s for you,” he said.

“I’m not sure I should,” Harry said with some reluctance because the drink was very pink, and decorated with a paper umbrella and a juicy bite of pineapple—his favourite. He wouldn’t admit to that most pub nights, but today was his birthday, and he was very, very wasted. He didn’t remember the last time he’d been this sloshed since, well, nearly two months prior, when he and Ron had shown up two weeks too early to Dean’s birthday. Malfoy had been there instead, celebrating his twenty-sixth wearing jeans so tight that Harry swore there was some sticking charm on them that made them impossible to look away from, because why else would Harry’s eyes be glued to them (Ron assured him there wasn’t). Which reminded him—

“Who invited you?” Harry demanded.

“You did.”

“No, I wouldn’t have—”

“You drunk owled me an hour ago!” Malfoy crowed.

Harry had the sudden, horrifying recollection of scrawling, “Can’t stop thinking about ur arse. Come down to Leaky. It’s my bday u ugly git.”

“The chicken scratch you pass off as quillmanship is abominable, by the way,” Malfoy continued, “you’re lucky I could even parse it at all. But after I’d put in all that effort into reading it, I thought—why not? I’ve earned it, haven’t I?”

“Oh.”

“So I’ve come down in person to savour the utter disappointment on your face when whoever you meant to send this owl to never showed up, and it was just me, your childhood nemesis—”

“Not disappointed,” Harry said, and kissed him.


	33. Guest List

“Portraits won’t take up seats,” Harry says, blurry-eyed from a mere glimpse of the seating chart. It reminds him of the Marauder’s Map, with all the names scribed in tiny print. He doesn’t recognise most of them, but he spots his next to Draco’s, at the end of the room.

“And they won’t need dinner or cake, just—you know. Wall space. Which we’ve plenty of.”

“Your point?” Draco says, his brows knitted with the effort of ensuring that all two-hundred-and-fifty-four guests are accounted for.

“I mean.” Harry gnaws at his lip. “I think it’d be nice.”

“You want portraits. To attend our wedding.”

“It was just an idea.”

“No, no,” Draco says slowly. He looks up, realisation rippling over his face. Harry feels hot; fragile.

“How many?” Draco asks.

“Six.” There is Dumbledore, Snape, Sirius and Lupin and Tonks, Fred. 

Draco scrunches his face up, making his own list. When he finishes, he says, “Seven, actually.” His face is soft. “I was going to wait until after the wedding, but it’s probably better if I show you now.”

Harry follows him to their closet, where Draco pulls out a frame wrapped in brown parchment. Harry knows a little of what to expect, and his head’s dizzy just thinking about it, his fingers clumsy like he’s forgotten how to use them.

Encased is a vivid portrait of a slumbering house-elf, scribbled in the broad strokes of a cheerful child. 

“Dobby?” Harry calls.

Dobby rouses at his name, blinking open big brown eyes and shaking out noodly purple legs over sloppy initials—DLM. “Is Dobby really seeing Harry Potter?” he squeaks, his ears twitching.

“Portrait magic’s not supposed to work like that,” Draco says, too-fast.

But it did.

Harry looks up, eyes wet.


	34. Decorations

“Okay, that’s enough,” I say, laughing.

“You don’t like it, Harry?” He’s halfway up the ladder, wand out and coaxing the ceiling higher. The chandelier waits, an enormous extravagance twinkling at my feet. 

I bite back my “No”. I don’t know why it makes me nervous—the streamers, the silver balloons; the way his tongue curls around my name like he’s saying, darling, or dearest—words I dare to reach for only under cover of darkness but that he displays so plainly, as though hung up.

My own affections fester within me, building momentum until it’s a tornado of turmoil tearing through my chest with nowhere to go.

I open my mouth.

Out tumbles, “I love you,” cracking raw between us.


	35. Debts Owed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For January’s Drarry Discord Drabble Challenge! 117 words, prompt: borrowed

Malfoys never borrow. Draco learns this the first time he reaches for Father’s quill and receives his own instead. It’s an easy lesson, and he swallows it comfortably as he does the word “mine”: _My_ room, _My_ broom, _My_ books. _My_ father will hear about this. 

Draco’s world inverts when Harry saves his life. “Pay it off,” Father hisses from behind bars, so Draco tries. He forces his way into the Aurors, onto Harry’s missions, into any possible opportunity to even the scales. But instead, Draco’s debt only grows when Harry saves him so often that Draco finds himself transforming, morphing into something of Harry’s making. Like in breathing on borrowed time, he’s become something to own.


	36. Getting Ready

“I didn’t think you’d pick up,” Draco says.

Harry huffs, not quite a chuckle. “Yeah, me too. Things okay?”

“I—yes. Happy Birthday.”

“Thanks.”

“Is it okay? That I’m calling?”

“Yeah, of course,” Harry says, rushed. They broke up three months ago, but Draco’s words are like Felix Felicis; he has a good feeling about this.

“Alright,” Draco says. There’s a pause. Harry closes his eyes, imagines Draco wetting his lips; waits for Draco to ask, “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting dressed. Ron’s set something up for me at Hog’s Head.”

“Wear the—sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. Wear the…?”

“Wear the green shirt,” Draco murmurs.

“Alright,” Harry laughs.

“You’re really going to wear it?”

Harry cradles the phone against his cheek. His heart has no business beating this fast. He says, “Why don’t you see for yourself?”


	37. Ember Island

“Then he said that the Humplevorts were down his trousers, so I had him take them off,” Luna says. The fire licks at her smile; ignites it.

Hermione gasps. “No, you didn’t.”

Luna flicks ash off her knees, elbow knocking into Draco’s shin. Draco’s sitting next to Luna, but maybe a hand back, so he’s half-hidden behind her curls. He’s wearing thin blue swimming trunks that ride up his skinny thighs, his toes dug in the sand, his hands pressed beside them. Harry follows the grains up his left wrist and stops. Draco’s not tugging on it—like he’s forgotten about it, for once. Harry hasn’t, but he’s surprised with how much he wants to. It’s like if he can just forget about the Mark, then he can pretend the war never happened. And then…

“He had the worst Humplevort infestation I’d ever seen,” Luna says.

The waves crash up shore a dark glimmer, swelling.

“So what did you do?” Ron asks.

In the glow of the fire, Draco looks like he’d come from the past—a golden, unmarred purity.

Luna is solemn. “I cured him, of course.”


	38. the past always catches up, one way or another

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anon tumblr prompt (thank you anon!)

Harry doesn’t recognise him at first. But here he is, standing in the back of his Care of Magical Creatures class—Draco Malfoy.

“Scorpius, Professor,” the boy corrects, though there is a kindly glint in his eye.

“Oh, Jesus. Sorry,” Harry apologises, cheeks flushed.

“It’s alright. Albus Severus says you’ve got the memory of a pygmy puff, and—”

“I’ll be sure to have words with him,” Harry interrupts, wary eyes on his middle child. “Now, class, as you can see"—he gestures to the enclosure behind him—"we’re studying hippogriffs today.”

Scorpius takes a step back. “My father warned me about this,” he mutters, jostling Albus with his elbow.

Harry should have expected the two boys to be friends. They’re both in Slytherin and small for their year, which, at their age, is all it takes for friendships to form. Although he can’t fathom what they’d talk about; he certainly has nothing to say to Malfoy, even now, except maybe Quidditch—and Albus hates flying.

“We talk about how our mums and das don’t live together,” Albus explains during spring recess a few months later, porridge-crusted spoon danging from his mouth.

“Not that it’s bad,” Jamie adds quickly, ever the thoughtful eldest.

“Yeah, it’s not bad,” Albus agrees. “But nobody else gets it, you know?”

Harry does know. The wizarding world is small and stifling traditional; there’d been maybe one divorce in the last fifty years, before the Malfoy-Greengrass Potter-Weasley doubleheader. It was a literal double header: they’d shared a line on the front page of the Prophet. Rivals, even in marital separation. Jesus. Harry needs a drink, just thinking of it.

“What’s wrong, daddy?” Lily asks.

“That’s just his face when he thinks about Scorpius’s da,” Albus says.

“Don’t eat with your mouth open,” Harry scowls. And then he sighs.

The next week, the boys get caught sneaking into Hogsmeade.

“They’ll have detention for three weeks,” Minerva says.

“Isn’t that a bit much?” Harry protests, despite knowing better than to undermine the Headmistress’s authority when he was a faculty member himself.

“One week should suffice,” Malfoy agrees.

Minerva purses her lips. And then she says, “One week.”

Harry gets up after Draco and watches his robes billow around him as he leaves. It reminds Harry of Snape, except it doesn’t, because they’re a deep cerulean, with silver detailing. Ravenclaw colours, on a Slytherin. Except Draco has never looked so good.

They say good-bye to their boys on separate ends of the staircase and then descend the stairs simultaneously, though not together. Harry fumbles over what to say. He thinks maybe he’ll blame Scorpius. Say something like, “Albus would never, he’s an absolute angel,” which is a total lie, but would rile Draco right up. And then it’ll be like old times again. An old-fashioned fistfight through the hallowed halls of Hogwarts. Harry doesn’t think it’s a terrible idea; it’s not like they can ever be friends. Sooner or later, the past will catch up to them, and they’ll be back at each other’s throats. Harry’s only speeding things up a bit.

“Our children are absolute dunderheads,” Draco says, instead.

Harry recalls the boys in the office, red-faced and squirming in overstuffed chairs; their glue-on moustaches drooped pathetically over gaping mouths. He can’t help but laugh.

It’s a beautiful day outside. The sky is an endless expanse of blue, and Harry’s dizzy marvelling over how big it is, all of it. It’s hard to imagine that people have ever died on these grounds; not when the now is so bright, Harry can barely open his eyes.

“I’ve brooms back in the hut,” Harry offers in a jumble, words tripping over each other in their rush to get out, “The new Cometheads; they’re practically weightless. You’ve got to try them.”

“I haven’t flown in years,” Draco says, distant. But he follows.


	39. when the party's over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: angst

“Don’t you know,” Draco says, trailing off.

“Don’t you know,” he starts again. He’s sitting up on my bed, sheets pooled around his waist. I’m still on my stomach with my face half-pressed in the pillow. A breeze’s blown in, the kind that lingers; cold, but not enough for you to move, until it’s too late.

I sigh, twisting up toward him.

He’s winding the ring around his finger; the silver one, with the Greengrass crest.

“I didn’t mean—” he lies, like he means it.

“I know,” I say.


	40. Mask

He was always scared. He was scared of the dark, of hippogriffs, of what Voldemort would do to his family—his future. “I’m always scared,” he said when I asked him if he was scared when Scorpius was born. When he’d first kissed me, and his father had disowned him. Twenty years and some things never changed. He was always scared—cheeks aflame; heart fluttering double-timed to mine.


	41. Miracle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: fluff

The first time it happens, it’s over a coke. Draco squeezes the bottle, then eyes it, wary.

“Go on,” I urge.

He twists open the cap. “Merlin!” he hollers when the coke fizzes to the brim. I steady him before it slips from his hand.

“This can’t be safe,” he declares. And then he takes a sip.

The clouds part. Angels sing. “It’s a bloody miracle,” he whispers.

One he starts, he can’t be stopped. It’s _“It’s a miracle!”_ with a mouth full of pop rocks, _“It’s a miracle!”_ at the cinema Friday nights, _“It’s a miracle!”_ going a hundred down the motorway.

“Look at Stella,” he beams over Miracle No. 3235.

He holds up a live feed of our living room from his mobile. Stella, our crup, is making a meal out of our cushions. But all I see is him and his sloppy, too-wide grin. He’s a miracle.


	42. Break the Fourth Wall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: crack

“… and the dragon figurine contained a small Muggle recording device that circumvented magical interference at Hogwarts by way of a radiomagnetic repulsor—”

Professor Malfoy nodded grimly, his gaze pinned on Harry’s arse—blackboard—mouth—arse—

“Err,” Harry said, looking around, confused. “The radiomagnetic repulsor, which may be recognisable by some professors at Hogwarts, as—” He scowled. “Draco, your line?”

“Fuck the case,” Draco declared, climbing into Harry’s lap. “I don’t need you to save my life for us to fuck.”

“But—” Harry gasped, lips instantly swollen. “But the UST, the _pining_ —”

Draco snaked a hand down Harry’s pants (which were under Harry’s trousers, in case you were wondering). 

“The case! The Neo-Death Eaters—” Harry panted.

“I’m sure the author can figure it out.”

Hermione burst into the room, a heavy scroll in her hand. “Harry, Malfoy, I’ve discovered—oh fuck it.” She walked back out. “C'mon, Pansy, let’s just finish this one off ourselves.”

And they lived happily ever after.


	43. Pillow Fort

It isn’t something either of them would have done, on their own. Scorpius reads it in a picture book. He says, “Please?”, and a small village rises from lumpy pillows and wrinkled sheets.

“Open sesame,” Harry says to his favourite thieves.

“Oookaaaayyy,” they say, and let him into their hearts.


	44. Homesickness

Some nights the moon shines brighter than the sun, and Draco lurches up, drenched in it, as though he drowned in his dreams. He can see the moon from the lonely window in his room, the room in Hangzhou that he took up to get as far from his father as he could.

His watch says five-pm, which means it’s one, here. In his mind, he sees Harry swing his leg over a broom and surge toward the setting sun. Draco soars behind him, arm outstretched, just out of reach—like a monkey grasping for the moon.


	45. Verklempt

“And Molly says to come by at three, but only if we stop by Luna’s first and bring back her knitting patterns so she can start on Hugo’s spring jumpers; she says he’s already outgrown his Christmas ones, can you believe—Harry? Did you fall asleep?”

“No.”

“You did.”

“No, I was listening. You were saying how much you loved me.”

“I was not.”

“Don’t lie. I can tell when you’re lying.”

“That's my line. I should be saying that. You’re the one who's—”

“Am I wrong?”

“I… no. I—I love you.”

“Alright, then.”

“Alright? That’s it?”

“That’s it, what?”

“You’re not going to say it back?”

“Draco, I’ve been saying it this whole time.”


	46. Floating Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for February’s Drarry Discord Drabble Challenge, prompt: bubbles.

The sky’s a muddling of mauve and mulberry; the sun in iridescent downfall. Some kid down the block’s blowing bubbles, and one floats up, brushing against Draco’s cheek, before popping. It doesn’t make a sound, but Harry winces; feels it ricochet against his ribcage.

Draco nudges him, holding out the vape.

Harry watches the green LED pulse like a twitch in his eye. Everything’s too bright—the fire escape cutting under his skin, his jumper scratchy around his throat. He’s suffocating on skunk weed, his eyes a glassy, glaucous green.

“You alright?” Draco asks. His legs dangle off a step, above the trees.

“Yeah,” Harry croaks. He fumbles for his sunglasses, before realising he’s already wearing them.

Draco sticks his face between the rails and looks down at the street. His legs swing. “Feels a bit like flying,” he says. He sounds like he’s shouting underwater, or else someone’s put bubblewrap over Harry’s ears.

Harry doesn’t need to look to know vertigo. But he looks anyway.

Three bubbles kiss his nose. His head’s woozy, and he’s got a fish’s eyes, thinking—this must be what love feels like, floating up.

Draco nudges him again. Harry shivers, his skin crackling with static. He cups Draco’s face and counts the freckles under the eyes. Then he closes his own, feeling the water expel from his ears in tiny streams of bubbles.

Clouds build over lilac skies in mounds of pale peach and cornmilk, piling up like suds in a bath until Harry’s saturated, soaked through in hues.

Harry’s nauseous, queasy in his heart wondering if Draco feels the same. Like he’s smoked too much love and has no choice now, but to throw it up.


	47. The Old Ways

The snow’s good today. Fresh. There was a storm over the weekend, and the wind wiped the lake clean; made the snow all soft again. The kind of soft that makes you want to take a nap in it and disappear for a while.

No one’s come through since the storm, so it’s slow-going on snowshoes. Draco would take the boat if it were summer, or Apparate if he were desperate—Harry did that, sometimes—but Draco likes the wind’s bite and how every step sinks, leaves a mark; every stride a slough when he could’ve had it easy. It makes him think he’s less of the boy he used to be—like every foot forward is another foot further from his past.

Some days, he wakes wheezing, stumbling out of bed. Running, running—worried the old fear’s finally caught up. Scared that he’s returned to his old ways. Sometimes, Harry says, “go back to bed”, like it’s a problem. But mostly, he doesn’t say anything. Mostly, he goes back to bed.

In the weeks that Harry leaves, Draco stays behind and talks with the trees, who never talk back except with the wind (soft rustlings, or sweet murmurs of agreement). He tries not to worry about Harry, but of course, he does, in a burrowing sort of way. Draco thinks that he can wait forever, by the lake. He can pretend Harry is eternally on the verge of coming home.

Mornings, Draco walks out in his striped pyjamas and sleeping hat and breathes in the sloping hills, the snow-capped peaks; the lake nestled between, asleep under snow. Then he goes back in, to bed.

When Harry returns, they take the trail out to the lake just beyond the hills. It’s just steep enough to be hard, and there’s nothing beyond it except a mirror of their own lake. But they go, “for the pleasure of it,” Harry says, even though they both know that’s a lie.

The first thing you see when you go by the lake is the sky canopied bright over the basin. The big blue over Wiltshire sweeps past the horizon as though reaching into the future. But this sky, it’s not so big. It’s safe.


	48. Road Trip

When Draco wakes, it’s to Harry’s wand beeping an alarm, Harry’s side warm against his.

“Wh—time?” Draco mumbles, his eyes dragging open, only to close again.

“It’s fine,” Harry says. He reaches an arm around and tugs Draco to his chest, their pillows already pressed together.

“But you said,” Draco says into the crook of Harry’s neck. He yawns and forgets the rest of his sentence.

“It’s only eight, Draco. We’ve got time.” Harry’s words rumble through him like the dull roar of an ocean wave, lulling Draco back down the depths of sleep.

It’s ten when Draco stumbles toward the bathroom. Ginny catches him on the way back and asks if he wants breakfast.

“We’ve got eggs, and I’ll fry up the rest of the potatoes from last night,” she says.

Draco glances down the hall and imagines Harry dressing behind the closed door: soft cotton smoothing over firm abs; swimming trunks riding up his thighs. The plan was to get coffee and egg bagels on the road to the surf shop so they’d make their lessons by eleven.

“I’ll have to ask Harry,” Draco settles.

“Why wouldn’t we?” Harry asks from the bed, bent over his knees and tying up his shoes.

“I thought we were in a hurry.” Draco chews on his lip, his leg jittery like it wants to escape the rest of him.

Harry looks up. There’s a radiance to him that feels like hot sunbeams over Draco’s face.

“We’ve got time, haven’t we?” Harry asks.

Ginny refries the potatoes with rosemary and red pepper flakes. She’s almost done with the eggs when Luna floats in big-eyed and blinking and says that she’ll make griddle cakes. Draco fiddles with the coffee machine and sets the table and cuts apples and hovers when there’s nothing else to do except wait for Luna to finish. There’s a joy when his hands are busy, but his mind is not, and he savours it as he heaps sugar into Harry’s coffee and swirls the spoon slowly, as though he’s brewing a potion. Twelve turns counter-clockwise, for love.

The road is two-way, and they’re headed south, so Draco’s window on the passenger side looks out to where the sea reaches sky. It’s almost four, and the sun hangs low like a ripe pomelo. They’ve got the wireless on a frequency that blips between mariachi and opera and sometimes fizzles out to static, white as seafoam.

“The waves are no good by now,” the surf shop guy insists, so they walk back onto the beach emptyhanded.

“I’m sorry. I know you wanted to try surfing,” Draco says. There’s sand kicked up on the back of his legs, and he’s starting to sweat, the sun beating down heavy with guilt.

Harry lays out two towels and sets up an umbrella.

Draco says, “And we’re leaving tomorrow, so you won’t get the chance, not until—”

Harry takes Draco’s hand and kneads it; kisses it tender. “Relax,” he grins, showing his teeth. “We’ve got time. We’ve got a whole lifetime of it.” And then he pulls off his shirt and runs straight for the waves.


	49. in the yellow and green

Time flies easy, broomback—buildings, matchstick-height; the castle between two fingers. Beyond the forest are mountains, and slumbering between, a mustard meadow a smear of yellow and green. Time flies easy, broomback—weaves between then and now; leaves time for what could’ve been. It’s in these gaps that he meets Draco, again.


	50. Ashwinder

They don’t kiss after the Fiendfyre, but Harry wonders if they would’ve if Draco had stayed, said thanks. Saving someone’s life ties you to them, inks their name in your book of cares, so worrying for Draco becomes reflexive, blends into a love that dies with the war. Like an ashwinder, risen from embers only to crumble to dust.


	51. Amber

The fight was over Lucius Malfoy. He’d sold Harry to the papers, again, and Draco had done nothing to stop him.

“He didn’t say much about you,” Draco said. He stood in the middle of Harry’s bedroom wearing trousers and a clean linen button-down rolled up to his elbows.

“Draco. He told them how I take my tea. He told them that I go down to Tesco at least twice a week, past midnight, to buy a bag of crisps.”

“He could’ve said that of half of London,” Draco said, eyeing his fingernails. “There’s nothing special in how you take your tea. There’s nothing special about you, really. You’re about as dull as a bag of plain crisps.”

“He gave them a photo of me! In _joggers_!”

“You pulled your hood up. The grey one that practically everyone owns a copy of. Even Mum Weasley couldn’t recognise you wearing that.” Then he yawned like he was waiting for Harry to leave, so he could go to bed.

Merlin. It wasn’t even Draco’s room. He had his own flat on the other side of town.

It scared Harry how love worked; how Draco could get away with acting like Harry was the crazy one when it was his father who’d exploited Harry for fame.

“This is better in the long run, anyway,” Draco said, a tinge wheedling now.

Harry snorted, disbelieving. “How so?”

Draco stepped forward to rest his hands on Harry’s arms, which were crossed.

“Once the world knows the full tedium of your humdrum life, they’ll stop haranguing you.”

“Call me a bore again, and my feelings might start getting hurt,” Harry said, trying not to smile.

Draco smirked. “You’re drab.” He leaned in, his finger jabbing Harry in the chest. "Dreary.“ Another jab, another inch closer. "Utterly. Unspectacular." 

Draco stood so close that his sneer was all that Harry could see. Harry wanted to kiss that ugliness right off his face, so he did.

The thing about love were the things you took for granted. Harry could run fingers through Draco’s hair, or he could slip a hand beneath Draco’s trousers, or he could press Draco up against a wall and slide to his knees, and none of this would come as a surprise.

It would be a surprise if he told Draco to choose: tell your father to stop, or I’ll walk.

"What’s wrong?” Draco asked, frowning.

“Nothing,” Harry murmured. He pressed Draco onto the bed and kissed him slowly. His body moved like it was pushing through amber, ensnared in sticky sweetness and cooling slowly.

“I don’t really think you’re dull,” Draco said after. “It’s only; he’s my father.”

He’s my father.

“Sure,” Harry said.

“I hate him too. You know that,” Draco said.

“I know,” Harry said.

Love was like that, sometimes; left out to harden into hate.


	52. Bloom

The longcase clock read five-thirty-five. It always did when Draco stopped by. Some evenings, Harry suspected Draco was a mechanism of the clock itself: a ticking, geared thing; cold and impersonal and relentless in its precision. **  
**

“I’ve brought cauldron cakes today,” Draco said, lifting the brown sack and shaking it.

Harry took the bag. It crinkled under his fist, crackling like lightning down his spine. Desperately, he missed the quiet behind the door.

“Looks like rain,” Draco said, waiting.

Draco brought out two plates and two forks. “We came around to Grimmauld plenty of Christmases,” he said once, months ago. Maybe years. It was hard to know how long it’d been when the clock only spoke in hours, minutes, seconds.

The plates were gold-rimmed and scalloped. The forks were small and silver and turned every bite into three. Harry stabbed his into the cake so that the chocolate oozed out. He wasn’t hungry; he’d stopped smelling things after the war.

Harry looked up. Draco dabbed his face with a serviette, little crumbs smearing dark against white linen, like comet tails.

“You missed a—” Harry said. He stopped, startled at his own voice, thin and scratchy and old.

“Where?” Draco asked. The ends of his mouth kept twitching, though he tried to hide it behind his hand.

Harry looked back down at his cake. It was a rich brown, dark and loamy as the earth.

Harry wondered what it’d be like, to be buried under it, to have soil fill his lungs. Would saplings take root in his chest? Would he be a home to life, again?

“I made it myself,” Draco said, soft. “The cakes. I’ve been practising.”

Harry’s vision focused on Draco’s mouth. The crumb still lingering in the corner of it, forgotten. Or was he depending on Harry to remove it?

“The eggs I acquired from a farm in East Anglia. The chocolate, precisely five-hundred milligrams of it, I had delivered from—”

Harry reached over and swiped the crumb off. Then he took a bite of cake and imagined muddy trainers and the forest soaked through under rain, though he tasted nothing.

Twenty minutes passed before Harry walked Draco to the door. The rain had started up a slow drizzle down, and Harry wondered what it’d feel like to be soaked in it, so he stepped outside.

“Harry?” Draco whispered.

Draco’s voice was never too loud, even when he spoke normally. Harry must’ve gotten used to it, like how he’d gotten used to the clock, one steady tick after the next, counting down the seconds until it was time.

Harry stretched his neck long, his face turned to the sky. He felt like he was being pushed up through the dirt, his throat thick and his hair streaked sloppy over his eyes. He wondered if, finally, it was spring.


	53. Burn It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For drarrymicrofic prompt "burn it" by Agust D.

The tapestry. The locket. The diary. Burn it. Starched sleeves soaked in bad thoughts from bad blood. Bloodlines spilt over bathroom stones jagged mirrors and fire. Chase the rancour of Black blood! Burn him, chimaeras, choke his breath, devour his soul!

“We can’t leave him.”

if only he’d left the blood to burn


	54. Metamorphosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco is a beetle.
> 
> For drarrymicrofic prompt "metamorphosis", based on Franz Kafka's _Metamorphosis_.

When Draco awoke in the morning, he found that he was a beetle, and not a particularly dazzling one at that, with a dull black coat and ridged legs so brittle that he almost snapped one trying to get up.

“This was going to happen sooner or later,” Pansy said when she caught him scuttling down the hall toward the bathroom. When he made no word of response except to clack his claws together, she picked him up and asked, “What are you going to tell Potter?”

Potter was Draco’s parole officer, and he didn’t find it funny at all. He harangued Draco to “transform back” for five solid minutes before taking out his wand to cast Finite Incantatem over and over and over, as though it was sheer lack of will and not some bloody blood curse that confined Draco to his hard-bodied shell.

“I wish you’d say something,” Potter said an hour later, his throat dry.

Potter took him home that day, handing him off to Pansy before Flooing the rest of the way to his own home.

A week passed with no change. Pansy left out a bit of milk and bread for him every night. On Saturday, she asked if he couldn’t set her up with a weekly allowance from his vaults for his expenses. “Nothing big,” she said smoothly, presenting him with crisp scrolls fresh from Gringotts and an ink pad for him to press his forked claw into, to sign.

“How long is this going to last?” Potter asked Pansy when he dropped Draco off again the following week.

Pansy frowned. “What do you mean?”

“This — thing. This insect thing.”

“It’s a blood curse, Potter. It lasts forever,” Pansy tutted dismissively.

Draco rather agreed with Pansy’s assessment, but still, Potter came by, week after week, neverending with his questioning: “Black or Malfoy? Are there any records? What species—” as though Draco’s condition wasn’t so hopeless as long as he didn’t stop trying to change it. As though, after all these weeks and years, Draco could still change.

It filled Draco with an idiotic kind of hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 💛 You can find me on [dw](https://fwooshy.dreamwidth.org/) and [tumblr](https://fw00shy.tumblr.com/).  
> 


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